Storyboard: Chris Anderson on Long Tail of Stuff

If you want a Blu-ray player or a new car, you’re pretty much stuck with what big companies like Sony and GM have to offer. It might not be exactly what you want, but it’s available and it’s cheap.

Until recently, the tools of production — from design to manufacturing — were inaccessible to the masses. Just because someone tinkering in their garage could design a better product didn’t mean the inventor could suddenly scale up the operation into production.

Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson thinks this is about to change. In “Atoms Are the New Bits” from the February issue of Wired, he argues that the proliferation of open-source, DIY design in recent years signals the dawn of a new industrial revolution.

In his previous bestseller The Long Tail, Anderson discussed the long tail of bits — the idea that open source software serving niche markets collectively takes up a larger market share than large, best-selling products. In his latest Wired story, Anderson argues that — thanks to the democratization of the tools of manufacturing — product design is moving toward the long tail of stuff.

But can a legion of small-scale product designers armed with great ideas collectively churn out more wares than Apple and Sony? In this week’s Storyboard podcast, Anderson discusses his new “mind grenade” with Wired Executive Editor Thomas Goetz.